People diagnosed with heart failure (HF), high blood pressure (hypertension), renal failure or any disease where fluid balance is more critical compared to a healthy person, often have a difficult time understanding the relationship between dietary sodium intake and excessive fluid stressing the organ systems (e.g., pulmonary congestion/peripheral edema). As an example, a main reason for re-hospitalization for patients with HF is the dietary over indulgence of sodium. In the United States, as the population of people over 50 years of age grows, heart failure has become an increasingly common diagnosis. Over half of the hospital admissions for heart failure are because of fluid overload directly related to an excess of sodium in the diet.
Excess sodium intake shifts extra fluid into the bloodstream. The extra fluid makes it difficult for an already weakened heart to function properly and pump blood out to the rest of the body. This extra fluid has a tendency to back up into organs and extremities creating a condition known as edema. Edema can become life threatening when the person's lungs are not able to get enough oxygen due to an added fluid barrier during physiologic oxygen transfer. The excess fluid causes the patient to actually drown, also known as acute pulmonary edema.
In the spring of 2003, the National High Blood Pressure Education Program (NHBPEP), which is coordinated by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), released updated hypertension guidelines. High blood pressure affects nearly 50 million people in the United States. Uncontrolled high blood pressure leads to a greater risk of heart attacks, heart failure, strokes and kidney disease. According to the recommendations, a lowered sodium intake to about 1600 mg. per day has the same effect as treatment with a single blood pressure lowering medication.
Physicians and nurses spend a significant amount of time teaching patients about the dangers of too much sodium in their diets. Often patients are only told, “take the salt shaker off of the table.” Processed food is notoriously high in sodium, such as quick service products, canned soups, canned vegetables or frozen dinners. Telling patients with salt restrictions to avoid high sodium foods alone does not offer a specific method for answering the patient's main question of how to actually put this prescribed diet into daily practice.
In addition, the current method of measuring sodium in foods and beverages is often confusing to patients not accustomed to the metric system. Some labels use grams (Gms.) of sodium while others mention milligrams (mg.) of sodium. Whether the patient has a newly diagnosed problem requiring strict sodium balance or someone who has been dealing with the problem for years, the matter of regulating the salt intake is often a complicated and confusing aspect of self-care.
Thus what is needed is a system and method that allows the typical patient on restricted sodium to diet to track and record their daily dietary sodium intake. Such a system and method must be economical to implement, easy to understand, and simple to use.